Games at David's: Tikal, Saboteur, Black Vienna

October 24th

First, I apologize (for anyone who actually reads this regularly) for this post being out of order, as well as for having gotten so far behind. I'll be pretty much caught up, though, at the end of today.

It's always nice to drive down to David's place for some friendly gaming. Tonight's gaming was to focus on Santiago, one of my favorites. However, we had eight people. Santiago really shines with five, so David and the people who really wanted to try it played that, while Larry, Dan, and myself played Tikal, another game that I'm happy to play pretty much any time, and works fairly well with three.

Tikal

Larry got a big start, moving just far enough into an area that Dan and I hadn't committed workers to, and building up a temple. Larry, sitting to my left, also kept drawing the treasure tiles, meaning I wasn't getting too many of them. Dan and I were stuck fighting over some smaller stuff waiting for the board to develop. When the first scoring round hit, Larry was well in the lead, with me bringing up the rear. The middle of the board started to fill out. Unfortunately, I didn't draw any tiles that would allow a big move, such as a big temple, or a blank tile to get access to one at the right time. I did make modest gains, though, as Dan and I were more successful spreading into the middle of the table than Larry. Things continued in this way. I got on the wrong side of the board, although I was pretty much by myself with a couple temples, as I had not placed a camp until after Dan and Larry had placed both of theirs. On the right side of the board, Larry had put the last treasures and a good sized temple where he and Dan would fight over them. Dan was stronger, though, and took the lion's share of the points. This gave him the lead, with me pulling into second, and Larry ending up in third. It was a fairly tight finish, though, to a dynamic game. A good play of Tikal, which made me feel that it's important, in a three player game, to get pieces on the table and spread out, in the early game, with an eye on espansion potential in the midgame, while working to create personal scoring areas for the later game. It's dangerous to let this turn into a fight between two players, who are ignoring a third.

Larry had brought one of his favorites, Saboteur, which we decided to try next. We joined the remaining players from the other table for this.

Saboteur

This is a light group cooperation/hidden traitor card game. The players have the role of dwarves, who are trying to mine for gold. However, 2-3 of the dwarves are working toward their own agendas, and are trying to keep the other dwarves from reaching the gold. There are three face down cards, 2 coals, and one gold, that are six card lengths away from the start. Players can play tunnel cards onto the table, or sabotage another dwarf's equipment, or play cave in cards on the tunnels that have been built. There's a really interesting conversational dynamic in the mid game, as players try to figure out who's on their side. Some of our players took some delight in making this harder for people. In the first game, I was a saboteur, and we won. In the second game, I was part of the regular group, and lost.

Black Vienna

This is a deduction card game with note-taking, similar in some ways to Sleuth. It's out of print, but apparently there's a version available as a free download. David had used this online resource to make his own set.

In this game, there is a deck of cards with each letter of the alphabet, plus an o with an umlaut (sp?). All the cards are dealt out secretly, except three, and each player notes what they get. The object is to be the first to correctly guess the three that have been removed. Of course, if you guess and are wrong, you can't win.

There are three cards face up, which each have three letters. On your turn, you can give a card to someone, and they have to say how many of those letters they have. They put a suitable number of markers on the card, and it stays in front of them. Later, players have the option to move cards that have no markers on them to other players.

My note taking skills were not good, and at least once I recorded responses under the wrong player (David's responses in Dan's column). This meant that I spent a fair amount of the midgame trying to check my notes while the game was progressing around me. Apparently, my system for note-taking was fairly poor, as I was quite far from figuring it out when Dan won the game. This was fun, though, and I'm sure I'll get more chances to play this, and it's cousin Sleuth, at David's.

With that, it was time to end the night and get some sleep before work.

GG, GL
JW